"I wonder who the devil he is," said the Baronet abruptly, as he threw the stump of his cigar into the fire. "If it's a fluke, it's as like a miracle as anything I ever saw." He recollected that he was talking without an interlocutor, and looked for a moment hesitatingly at his daughter. "And your grandmamma told you nothing of her adventure in church?" "No, papa--not a word." "It seems to me, women can hold their tongues sometimes, but always in the wrong places." Here he shook the ashes of his cigar into the grate. "Old Granny's a fool--isn't she, Trixie, and a little bit vicious--eh?" Sir Jekyl put his question dreamily, in a reverie, and it plainly needed no answer. So Beatrix was spared the pain of making one; which she was glad of, for Lady Alice was good to her after her way, and she was fond of her. "We must ask her to come, you know. You write. Say I thought _you_ would have a better chance of prevailing. She won't, you know; and so much the better." So as the Baronet rose, and stood gloomily with his back to the fire; the young lady rose also, and ran away to the drawing-room and her desk; and almost at the same moment a servant entered the room, with a letter, which had come by the late post. Oddly enough, it had the Slowton postmark. "Devilish odd!" exclaimed Sir Jekyl, scowling eagerly on it; and seating himself hastily on the side of a chair, he broke it open and read at the foot the autograph, "Guy Strangways." It was with the Napoleonic thrill, "I have them, then, these English!" that Sir Jekyl read, in a gentlemanlike, rather foreign hand, a ceremonious and complimentary acceptance of his invitation to Marlowe, on behalf both of the young man and of his elder companion. His correspondent could not say exactly, as their tour was a little desultory, where a note would find them; but as Sir Jekyl Marlowe had been so good as to permit them to name a day for their visit, they would say so and so. "Let me see--what day's this--why, that will be"--he was counting with the tips of his fingers, pianowise, on the table--"Wednesday week, eh?" and he tried it over again with nature's "Babbage's machine" and of course with an inflexible result. "Wednesday week--Wednesday," and he heaved a great sigh, like a man with a load taken off him. "Well, I'm devilish glad. I hope nothing will happen to stop them now. It can't be a _ruse_ to get quietly off the ground? No--that would be doing it too fine." He rang the bell. "I want Mrs. Gwynn." The Baronet's spirit revived within him, and he stood erect, with his back to the fire, and his hands behind him, and when the housekeeper entered, he received her with his accustomed smile.